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So there is this character, strong, independent, intelligent and resourceful. They are a valued member of any team and more than contributes their fair share to the team. They might not have been a true bonafide badass, but at the very least they were capable of standing on their own. Then the work was remade by new writers and everything changed. The once awesome Action Girlis now aDamsel in Distress. The Badass Bookworm is now just a plain old Nerd. The Action Survivor is now just The Drag-Along, or worse.

As with the inverse trope Adaptational Badass, this is not about characters who suffered a minor power decrease or had their most badass moment cut from the adaptation. It is when their usefulness, agency, and contribution to the plot is significantly reduced. Realize too, that this may be intentional and in a long running series may have the character Take a Level in Badass to provide Character Development and align them better with the original version.

Something similar often appears in parodies, either exaggerating a character's existing weaknesses or just as a cheap way of making them look ridiculous.

Examples:

Najenda from the anime adaptation of Akame ga Kill! was originally a badass Action Girl who bravely guided Night Raid in multiple missions and risked her life assuring they were safe. In the anime, she almost never gets physically involved in most of Night Raid's fights, and whenever she does she goes down pretty easily or requires saving. Otherwise, throughout the series she mostly sits at her base providing orders for her followers and doesn't even help them in fights against named villains.

Sylia Stingray in Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 was in more of a Mission Control role for the Knight Sabers and rarely went into the field herself, whereas her OVA counterpart personally led the Knight Sabers into battle herself.

Krillin in general. While normally is a good fighter, in the non-canon movies his role is only as Plucky Comic Relief and his Butt-Monkey status is much more frequent. He's subject to all sorts of mishaps. Misfortunes that have fallen on him include being peed on by Gohan and having rubble from Garlic Jr.'s castle fall on him (movie 1), nearly getting his face fried by a ki blast and getting whacked in the head repeatedly with a shopping bag by Chichi (movie 7), getting thrown into some rubble by Broly and forgotten by the rest of the Z Warriors (movie 10) and a Running Gag in several of the films where a villain punches him square in the face, which leads him thinking, "why does this always happen to me?!"

Jaco joined the Z Fighters in defending Earth from Freeza's minions and was able to take out several despite lacking the ability to fly and use Ki attacks. When Dragon Ball Super retold this event, Jaco instead became a Small Name, Big Ego, constantly bragging about how awesome he was and then cowering behind Bulma when Freeza's forces came.

In both Resurrection F and Super, Gohan became a lot weaker than he used to be from not training, but in Super, he can only stay Super Saiyan for a few minutes before his energy runs out.

In "Resurrection F" Krillin had no problem fighting Frieza's soldiers and took them down as easily as the rest of Earth's fighters, but in Super's retelling of the story he spends most of the battle too scared to fight and the others go out of their way to protect him, it isn't until Piccolo points out that he's actually more powerful than they are that he begins to fight back.

In the anime, Goku Black is a terrifyingly competent No-Nonsense Nemesis whose Super Saiyan Rose (Which is basically Super Saiyan Blue but with Zamasu's Ki) transformation and Saiyan Power allows him to become exponentially more powerful to the point that he managed to overwhelm the combined might of Goku, Vegeta and Future Trunks. As a result, he remains as one of the only villains to remain completely undefeated by the time he fuse. Manga Black? He only got as high as Super Saiyan 2, gets his ass kicked by Blue Vegeta note Which of note could easily shrug of blows from him even in base form in anime and rather than make a comeback out of this, gets unambiguously defeated to the point that Future Zamasu is forced to heal him. He also succumbs to Bond Villain Stupidity as rather than murder Trunks at the first opportunity that he would have done in the manga, chose to repeatedly spare him just because he wants to become stronger from fighting him. In fact, the reason why both Black and Zamasu decide to fuse in this medium is out of a genuine last resort due to both Vegeta and Goku overwhelming them both rather than because they don't want to play around anymore.

In the Fullmetal Alchemist manga and Brotherhood anime, Selim Bradley is revealed to be the strongest of the homunculi. In the 2003 anime, he's just a child who gets offed by the anime's Pride, who's Wrath in the manga. This was because Selim was revealed to be Pride after the original anime was made.

In the Kirby games, King Dedede could hold his own against Kirby, and came close to winning against powerful adversaries, most notably Nightmare in Kirby's Adventure. In the anime he relies on the Monster of the Week to take care of Kirby, and while in the games Dedede would fight Kirby himself after they failed, in the anime he just gives up after the episode's monster is defeated. His flying and swallowing powers are gone, and he only really uses his hammer to hit Escargoon for comic relief. If the Monster of the Week disobeys Dedede and attacks him, Dedede would probably just run away and cry for help.

While Kirby is usually more powerful with a copy ability (except for a joke ability like Sleep), it is still possible to clear some stages and bosses in the games without using a copy ability. In the anime, Kirby is pretty much a punching bag until he gets a copy ability. Also, in the games, Kirby is fully capable of defeating whatever bad guys pop up with little prompting. In the anime, Fumu/Tiff has to tell him to inhale an enemy before he can actually fight.

Most of Meta Knight's powers — his tornadoes, his ability to fly, use of electricity and fire — are removed from this version, and most battle's he's in will either have him undergo The Worf Effect, or leaving Kirby to do the work so he can get stronger.

Link from The Legend of Zelda is known for being a courageous Kid Hero who encounters multiple dangers in his quest to save Zelda. Link in the first The Legend Of Zelda manga does end up saving the day but he comes off as utterly cowardly compared to both his game version and future Link adaptations. He cries and whimpers when he encounters enemies.

In a manga adaptation of Mega Man Zero, Zero (a powerful robot who hunted rogue machines) is turned into a wimp who tends to be scared by everything. Subverted in that it turns out to be an example of Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass.

Felicia in the anime adaptation Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge goes from the world's greatest Action Girl into a Damsel in Distress who needs rescuing four times in the miniseries from characters she would ordinarily defeat effortlessly. The most embarrassing rescue would have to be when she's saved by a regular, elderly human man with zero combat experience whatsoever.

In Piccolino No Boken, an adaptation of The Adventures of Pinocchio, Geppetto was extremely weakened. He wasn't particularly badass in the book, but he could handle a fight and jump out of windows. Here he is physically lame, with severe hearing and sight problems.

In Pokémon Adventures this happens with Whitney, oddly enough. Despite her and her Miltank being feared as one of the most difficult Gym Leader battles in all of Pokemon, she loses all of her fights in the Adventures manga. During her only battle where she comes off as a credible threat, she doesn't even use Miltank, instead using Cleffa and Igglybuff (who are Baby Pokemon, and in-game they are exactly as strong as they sound).

Korrina isn't wimpy exactly, but she got toned down in the anime. In the original Pokémon X and Y, she's long since mastered Mega Evolution, but in the anime it takes several episodes before she obtains a Mega Stone and has mastered it. Somewhat justified; in the game, she's already a Successor, but in the anime, she's chastised by her grandfather Gurkinn for her recklessness and has to earn that title.

In the original Pokémon Black and White, Iris is one of the strongest trainers in Unova, being either the student of Drayden or his successor as gym leader of the 8th and strongest gym. And in Pokemon Black And White 2, she is even stronger to the point where she becomes the Champion. In the animé she's a rookie who can't even evolve her Axew and gets beaten by Drayden twice. Again, somewhat justified as she's still in training as opposed to her game counterpart and it's stated that she will one day take Drayden's place as gym leader with his words in his last appearance in the anime. Her post-series special also shows her continuing to grow stronger, with her Dragonite growing strong enough to help her defeat Clair, and with her catching another dragon-type Pokemon.

The evil organization leaders take a considerable downgrade in the show as well. Usually they are the strongest enemy of their team and a difficult boss fight. In the show, the instant their plan falls apart they give up and/or get arrested. Ghetsis is probably the biggest example, as in the Black and White games awakening the Legendary was only part of his plan and its implied he was going to defeat N after he served his purpose. Including his Legendary dragon.

Ash is the anime counterpart to Red. Red ends up one of the most powerful trainers in the games by Pokémon Gold and Silver and is a legend in-series. Ash's battling abilities are inconsistent and he doesn't get much respect for his countless achievements.

Lillie from Pokémon Sun and Moon suffers this briefly, as in the anime, she suffers a crippling fear of touching Pokemon due to a mysterious incident involving a trip with her mother. This is vastly different that her game counterpart where she just hates Pokemon fighting and getting hurt.

In the anime, Goldeen behave just like Magikarp when on land (as a useless fish that flops about).

Latios and Latias of Pokémon Heroes are a funny case. In the games, they among one of best of Dragon-type Pokémon, but their fight against Annie's and Oakley's Espeon and Ariados boils down to the two turning invisible and attempted ramming before getting pummeled by Swifts and Night Shades followed by getting wrapped up in electrified nets. However in the climax in which a tidal wave with enough force to shatter solid rock threatens Alto Mare, the two dragons used their psychic attacks to level it, even after Latios was used for hours as a battery for a superweapon. It's implied that the two don't fight very often compared to other on-screen Pokémon in the series, making the two extreme examples of Unskilled, but Strong that can only use their strongest powers in die or fly moments.

Played with when it comes to Misty. She's a competent trainer; however, her older sisters are the Cerulean City Gym Leaders, instead of Misty herself as in the games. That being said, Misty ended up being the strongest trainer among them and took over as Gym Leader when she stopped traveling with Ash.

Speaking of Misty, her Starmie. In Pokémon Red and Blue it is a Wake-Up Call Boss (giving grief to players who started with Charmander and even Squirtle), but in the anime it is infamous for losing almost every fight it's been in. Its pre-evolved form Staryu has a better win count, and Misty eventually favors using the latter more.

The one time a Master Ball (the Poké Ball that can capture any Pokémon regardless of how strong it is in the games) was used in the anime, it ended up being eaten by a Whiscash (a giant catfish Pokémon).

In the original cartoon incarnation, Mojo Jojo was the Arch-Enemy of The Powerpuff Girls and certainly one of the most competent enemy at that as he, for example was able to succeed in ruling the world, about three times, take on all 3 of the Girls, and took out an alien overlord with ease. But in Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z, he was portrayed as far less competent, and more of a dimwitted, Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, and wasn't even taken seriously as a threat, unlike the original Mojo.

While Tsukune Aono from Rosario + Vampire was a wimp at the start of the series, he also Took a Level in Badassseveral times. However, the anime portrayed him as a wimp for almost the entire time. In Capu2, he already got his Power-Up, but never uses his power until the end of the series. In the end of the first anime season, when he got his vampire powers from Moka, it wasn't him who defeated Kuyo, it was Moka again.

Tuxedo Mask gets a lot less formidable going from manga to anime. The manga version is a Magic Knight who has decent attacks and swordsmanship, while the 1992 anime version mostly drops in to provide a timely distraction that lets Usagi get back on her feet, seldom actually fighting at all.

This same thing happens to Sailor Chibi-Moon between the manga and the 1992 anime. While she is a quite capable fighter in the manga version, even getting her own Eternal form with the other Guardians, in the original anime, she was quite pathetic as her basic attack in S, the Pink Sugar Heart Attack, is nothing more than a slap and her only real attack in Super S was just calling Pegasus. It's a far cry from fighting both the Death Phantom and Pharaoh 90.

The Inner Senshi in Sailor Moon Crystal receive a massive amount of nerfing and downgrading in terms of capableness. Their attacks barely ever do anything, and they spend much of time being knocked down, overpowered, captured and brainwashed. All for the sole purposes of making other characters look better. Although the Manga was guilty of doing this to an extent, Crystal alters/removes a significant number of moments where they contributed. It is especially bad in the first season, where more emphasis is placed on Usagi and Mamoru's romance. Resulting in the later stealing a lot of focus away from them, and doing their jobs far better. This happens again with the Outers in season 3. By the second half the Inners have been reduced to little more then rent-a-damsels.

Of the Bronze Saint in Saint Seiya, Shun. In the anime filler-episode and especially in the non-canon movie his only role is to be defeated and allow the Big Damn Heroes entrance of his brother.

In the anime of Sands of Destruction, protagonist Kyrie is pathetically incompetent in terms of even staying out of the way during a fight, tending to hog the Distress Ball like a damsel looking for a knight. While he didn't like to fight in the original game or the later manga adaptation, he was at least capable there.

Miki is presented considerably differently between the anime and manga. The anime removed her confrontations with the others, making her much more muted than her manga version. The anime also toned down her more Action Girl qualities. In the manga she's on a similar level to Kurumi but in the anime she has more difficulties.

Yuki in episode 12 can't even hit a zombie with a baseball bat. Yuki in chapter 29 kills a zombie with a mop. She freaks out afterwards, but it is still is impressive for a girl who was The Load until then. Yuki's Adaptational Comic Relief also causes a hit to her general competence in the anime.

Kasuga from the Sengoku Basara franchise gets hit hard with this. In the games, she's a bit spacy but a fully capable ass-kicker like all the others. The anime on the other hand turns her into a full blown Faux Action Girl, who exists solely to fawn over Kenshin and lose fights.

Asuka suffers a measure of this in the anime of Senran Kagura, being a klutz with skills inferior to her peers who's afraid of her own spirit animal. Contrast the games, where she's a hot-blooded, perfectly capable generalist with a strong drive for self-improvement and no problem using her ninpo.

Many characters in Sonic X are significantly less useful than in the games, with Sonic, Shadow, Knuckles and Rouge being the only real exceptions. It was probably done for Cast Speciation, because everyone in the games can use Sonic's basic attacks and nearly keep up with him.

Several of the characters in the Soul Eater anime get this. They're not really any less competent, but many of them don't reach the heights of power their manga counterparts did, due to the series having a Gecko Ending.

Crona/Ragnarok never becomes a kishin. On the other hand, he manages to keep up his sanity, so he comes out ahead there.

Soul never becomes death scythe. In the manga he killed Arachne and devoured her soul to become one, but in the anime Asura betrays and eats her instead.

Ken Kaneki in the Tokyo Ghoul anime suffers badly from this, being rendered completely useless all the way up until the Aogiri arc, where he mostly gets back on track just in time for the season to end (stemming from complete removal of basically all his character development scenes regarding his combat training). However in the 2nd season, he's rendered just as ineffectual as his first season incarnation thus far (especially with the removal of one of the most iconic scenes in the manga completely (103 Bones)). Two of the most stand out examples from Season 1 were the Scrapper fight, which Manga Kaneki wrecked until a contrived series of redundancies rendered him helpless, where as Anime Kaneki simply cowered the entire time. And at the beginning while still human, Manga Kaneki actually fought back against Rize when she attacked him, where as Anime Kaneki simply fled.

Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle: In the light novels, Lisesharte Atismata has a moderate reputation as a fighter and engineer. In the anime, her contributions in battle are negligible at best, if only to give Lux Arcadia and the other girls in his harem some shared glory.

Katsuya Jonouchi in the manga is very strong and does good in fights, beating up Bandit Keith Howard and grab-holding Kaiba by his coat collar - and taking down a brutish serial killer. In Toei's Yu-Gi-Oh anime he was the only one injured during Death-T 1 and Miho saved the day, and was also beaten up by Kaiba's guards and the model Aileen Rao. In the second-series anime he comes across more as a wannabe badass, getting beat up by Bandit Keith and Kaiba grabbing his fist mid punch to throw him to the ground. His Dueling skills also take a hit, as in the manga he only loses fairly in a duel we see twice - once against Kaiba, once against Seeker (three times if you count Rishid), and a good portion of the Battle City arc was about his Character Development and his desire to surpass Yugi. In the anime, he loses to Yugi in Duelist Kingdom, loses to Duke Devlin in a filler, loses to Kaiba again in Alcatraz, loses to Mai in the Orichalcos arc, and loses to Siegfried in the Grand Championship, though he does get several victories in between and his losses there boiled down to luck. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, which is manga-based, continues the trend, as Jonouchi does nothing of importance, is mocked by Aigami for failing to escape a dimension and has to be rescued, and even wears a dog suit like he did in the anime to help pay for a new duel disk, not even getting to fight.

Mokuba, believe it or not. In his first appearances, he was a rather creepy villain who went head to head with Dark Yugi three times, and an expert at the game Capsule Monsters. Even after his Heel–Face Turn, he was only kidnapped twice, and he escaped by himself one of those times. The anime, however, ignored his early villain phase almost entirely, didn't even hint at his skill in other games, and generally played him up as an ineffectual Morality Pet for his brother.

In the anime, Thief King Bakura is first seen captured by two random guards and stumbling as they haul him along, before immediately being possessed by Yami Bakura and taking on his personality from that point on. When Yami Bakura releases him after he's outlived his usefulness, he's confused and horrified as he turns into sand. In the manga he was just as wicked as Yami Bakura and even schemed openly with his future self as his introduction into the story involves him assaulting the Pharaoh's palace with the tomb that he robbed from the Pharaoh's father, taking out all of the guards surrounding the palace in the process and while he was scared at turning into sand, he still tried to summon Zorc while it was happening.

In the manga, Ra was completely immune against the Effects of Osiris and Obelisk due to being on top of their pyramid hierarchy. In the anime, Ra can be affected by their Effects when it is not God Phoenix. This trope was necessary since Yugi Muto would have never taken out all three gods at once.

While Akane Tendo from Ranma ½ is generally Overshadowed by Awesome, the anime makes her a much worse fighter than she is in the manga. Her feats of strength and ability considerably lessened in the anime, and is made a Damsel in Distress more often (In the manga she's more often a Damsel out of Distress). One clear example of this is that in the anime, Kodachi is a notable threat to Akane and threatens to defeat her a few times over the course of the show. In the manga, Kodachi will make appearances by attacking Akane out of nowhere, and is casually deflected.

Metal Sonic of the Sonic the Hedgehog games got hit with this in the Archie comics. For the longest time, Metal Sonic was just one of many Mook bots getting sent out to annoy Sonic, the longest-lasting version being Metal Sonic v3.3, who lasted two dimensional hops and battled Shadow, Blaze and Marine to a standstill. All the other times, he barely lasted an issue. This got changed during the reboot.

The Transformers: Combiner Wars: Menasor in the original cartoon is one of the strongest combiners, and easily one of the most effective Decepticons. As he defeats Bruticus and in his debut and he overpowered Superion, a rarity for a show where the Decepticons almost always lose badly. In the comics, Menasor is one of the weakest combiners. His debut fight with Superion is a Curb-Stomp Battle with Superion easily trouncing him and when the other Combiners show up, Menasor is defeated easily and subdued by a trio of regular sized bots. Coincidently Menasor's toy from the line that the comic is supposed to promote, is the weakest of all the new combiners.

The Transformers: Windblade: Bruticus gets similarly hard hit, but it's more justified in this case because one of his components was brain dead and of the other four, only Onslaught and Brawn really are cooperating. Unable to effectively coordinate, Bruticus is easily beaten by Ironhide (who also had the most experience fighting Combiners of anyone on the planet).

Ultimate Spider-Man sees this done with Shocker, Rhino, Boomerang, Kraven (at first), Killer Shrike, Omega Red, and Spot, going from guys who can keep Spider-Man on his toes (or the Hulk and Iron Man in the case of Killer Shrike and the X-Men in the case of Omega Red) to guys whom Spidey could easily beat without too much trouble.

While the Ultimate version of Doctor Doom does have "natural" super-powers, he lacks the magic skills of his mainstream counterpart, and is seriously less important to his Universe. He also isn't quite as talented in his schemes.

Fan Works

While Touhou Ibunshu significantly lowers everyone's power level compared to the original notoriously overpowered Touhou cast, none get hit harder than Reimu. She goes from one of the most broken players in a game that already begins broken to someone who can't use any magic at all without pre-prepared spell cards, frequently finding herself utterly useless and repeatedly asking herself what she's doing among all these mystical beings in the first place. She temporarily gets Yuyuko's powers during the final arc, but it's still a large step down.

In the Ever After High fic Dagger, nascent Evil Sorceress Raven is, inexplicably, unable to protect herself from physical bullying. The girl who has frozen time and polymorphed people into chickens by accident- to say nothing of her habitual use of pyro-and-telekinesis- is reduced to a sobbing mess when someone shoves her in the hallway.

Maria Nitzchmann, aka Miho Nishizumi, in the Heimatfront series. In canon, Miho, while often meek and timid, is a capable strategist and quite knowledgeable about tanks, and leads her school to victory over many opponents, including her talented older sister. In this fic, an AU taking place in Germany during the war's last days, Maria, as a civilian, doesn't have the same experience that her Panzer ace brother does (only enough knowledge about tankery to get her in trouble if she's found out), and is generally lucky to even survive her battles.

With This Ring: In canon Young Justice, Wolf is, well, a super-powered wolf, with all that that implies. Here, she's just a wolf pup- a super-powered one, but a pup nonetheless.

Haku, a student of Konoha High School, is easily bullied and manipulated because of his rather feminine appearance. His canon counterpart was able to totally overpower Naruto and Sasuke during their second confrontation in the Land of Waves arc, and was skilled enough with needles to put Zabuza in a death-like state that briefly fooled even Kakashi.

Terumi Mei, Konoha High School's resident English teacher, is held hostage by gang members on two separate occasions, making it necessary for others to rescue her. In canon, she's the fifth Mizukage, possessing two bloodline abilities, and quite easily fended off an assault from Sasuke.

Gengetsu is a washed-up drunk who offers no resistance to being physically pushed or beaten. In canon, he was the second Mizukage and was considered one of the strongest shinobi of his generation.

In The Bald and the Esper Tatsumaki starts off weaker than canon but with far more varied skills (using her telekinesis to create bombs, laser blades, and more) then starts training under Saitama. While she still becomes an S-Class hero when she signs up, she's not to her canon level of performing a Colony Drop or throwing several skyscrapers with ease.

Young Justice Titans unfortunately does this with Lilith Clay. In the comics, Omen was one of the earliest Teen Titans, had some psychic powers, precognition, and a few mystical powers later on. Here, her precognition is more long term with her gaining visions of a world ruled by Trigon and she has no combat or other skills otherwise. At least, until she got Demonic Possession. Then the Titans couldn't even lay a scratch on her until a magical hero got involved.

Takua in BIONICLE: Mask of Light. In the Mata Nui Online Game, Takua flew as Kongu's second during the Gukko Force's attack on a Nui-Rama Hive, led six Matoran in a hopeless defense of Kini-Nui against hordes of Rahi, and braved the depths of the Makuta's lair itself. In the Wall of History animations, Takua aided in the liberation of Le-Koro, stood up to an entire Pahrak swarm, and joined the Toa Nuva in their pursuit of the Bohrok-Kal. In Mask of Light... Takua constantly shies away from his duty and responsibility, panics in the face of danger, and abandons Jaller after getting scared by Makuta. It's not until he stands up to the Rahkshi in Onu-Koro that Takua finally shows off some of his former badass qualities.

Sidorak in BIONICLE 3: Web of Shadows. In the books and comics, Sidorak was a fierce warrior king who led his Visorak hordes into battle. In Web of Shadows, Sidorak is a sniveling coward who always needs Roodaka to do things for him, and Roodaka even outright says that he would never dirty his hands with conflict.

All of the villains, sans Metus who was a weakling to begin with, in BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn:

Bone Hunters and their Rock Steeds: Short but deadly and merciless desert bandits riding on savage dinosaurs. In the movie, a bunch of weak Mooks who ride on dinosaurs that behave like horses.

The Skrall: Spartan-esque soldiers who have never been beaten in a one-on-one duel before. In the movie, they run around squawking like animals and fall to a single hit. Elite Skrall are the same but more so — several times tougher than regular Skrall, even weaker and dumber than them in the movie.

The "Mighty" Tuma: In the stories leading up to the movie, as well as in the novelization, he's a ruthless and savvy overlord who came close to conquering the planet, and was only defeated because his size made him a slow fighter in close-combat. In the movie, he's a bumbling, full-of-himself brute who considers pushing over a much smaller opponent a deed worthy of celebration. He is defeated by the hero battering a wound on his back, which he left entirely unprotected every time he turned his back on him to bask in his own glory.

In The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Kaa the python one of the oldest, wisest, and most feared animals in the jungle. His wisdom and hypnotic dance make him one of Mowgli's most powerful allies, and even Bagheera and Baloo are wary about going to him for help. In the animated Disney adaptation, Kaa, while still dangerous, is a cowardly and unsuccessful villain who acted as Trope Namer for Smug Snake. He becomes even more of an Adaptational Wimp in the sequel, in which he is beaten with a stick by Shanti's little brother.

Akela and the wolves also get this, as in the opening of the film they give Mowgli to Bagheera because they feel that they cannot protect him from Shere Khan. In the book, Shere Khan himself comes to demand the child, and the pack stands up to him. Akela remains an important ally to Mowgli until the wolf's death.

Mowgli himself, who in the original story survived the jungle's and the man-village's dangers by being too badass for either of them to be able to handle.

Even Bagheera is noticeably less formidable in the movie. In the book, he's one of the jungle's most feared and respected inhabitants — not so much in the movie, where he's more of a Comically SeriousButt-Monkey. In the sequel he's become a full-fledged Chew Toy whose sole role is to get beat up a lot.

In Disney Fairies, nearly everyone is this, compared to the books. Tinker Bell no longer carries her dagger with her everywhere, and her personality became a lot brighter and more cheerful compared to her well-meaning but somewhat jealous and bitter persona in the novels. Most notable, though, is Queen Clarion; in the books, she ruled singlehandedly, and was a main character who went on quests and once fought a dragon using an earring as a shield. In the movies, she's more motherly, was Demoted to Extra, and gained a Canon Foreigner love interest.

Films — Live-Action

The critically panned Batman & Robin managed to drastically alter five epic Batman characters, one of them being the Dark Knight himself.

Batman is normally the level-headed anti-hero who never falls for Poison Ivy's feminine wiles and defeats her with ease. In the film, Poison Ivy seduces Batman easily and nearly succeeds in killing him as if it were nothing.

Robin is usually the optimistic hero who comes into conflict with Bruce over a difference in morals on how they perform justice. In the movie, he fights Batman because of petty jealousy and a desire to be the center of attention for once.

Mr. Freeze is always a cold, Tragic Villain who reluctantly fights Batman while in search of a cure for his dying wife, wanting no hand in evil at all. The film version instead has Mr. Freeze as a Laughably Evil comic relief villain making numerous ice puns while playfully fighting Batman like a kid. The fact that his backstory about wanting to cure his wife is still included in the movie makes this portrayal even more jarring.

Poison Ivy is another Tragic Villain who only wants to save the plant life of the world. Reluctantly finding herself in conflict with Batman and slowly losing her humanity due to her plant mutation. In the film, she's an immatureSmug Snake with a crush on Mr. Freeze, hoping to impress him by killing Batman and Robin.

In most stories, Bane is a master strategist with a peak physical condition who broke Batman's back. In the movie, he's just Ivy's Dumb Muscle and loses a fight with an inexperienced Batgirl.

Cinderella herself in Cinderella (2015). While she wasn't an Action Girl by any typical means in many versions of the original fairy tale or the Disney version, she was still an enduring character who often stood stern and strong in the face of abuse. She also stood up for herself, even if her stepfamily would never take serious her moments of rebellion, and she showed a little bit of sarcasm and intelligence here and there (in the morning when she called the clock "That old killjoy, even he orders me around!", when she stood up for her right to go to the ball even after her stepsisters mocked her wishes to go, "Maybe I should interrupt the "music" lesson", and in the climax once she's locked up she's trying everything she can to get out: screaming, pulling at the door, thinks up to get the dog so he can scare away Lucifer...). Any semblance of a spine is gone in the remake, and instead now we get a Cinderella that's so passive and meek she lets her stepfamily walk all over her, even if in this version she has the means to leave the house, she doesn't even attempt to escape once she's locked up in this version!

Mina Murray frequently gets this in the many film adaptations of Dracula. In the book, she plays an active role in the defeat of Dracula and is the Team Mom. Many movies, however, reduce her to the role of the Damsel in Distress.

Most drastically in Dracula (1931), which she spends most of weeping hysterically. The one time in the novel in which she gets hysterical is for a very good reason.

In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the title villain is portrayed more sympathetically and Mina has a quasi-romance with him, making her less enthusiastic about his destruction.

Kryptonite itself. In the comics and prior adaptations, the Kryptonite is clearly established as lethal to Superman and other Kryptonians. In the film, while it does still harm kryptonians it just seems to inhibit access to their strength when Batman weaponizes it to engage Superman. It does still work well enough to deliver a killing blow against Doomsday during Superman's Heroic Sacrifice, though.

Mercy Graves takes after her incarnation in the aforementioned Superman: Doomsday in being a personal assistant for Luthor, not his bodyguard.

Jax-Ur in the comics was a Kryptonian scientist who, naturally, was given the yellow sun powers to fight Superman. In some versions he is treated more like a General Zod-lite. In Man of Steel he is firmly the scientist character among Zod's crew and is never involved in a fight.

Mumbles in Dick Tracy; in the comic strip, he's not the best crook, but he's dangerous, and fully capable of murder; he even seems to have Joker Immunity (something very unusual for Chester Gould's characters, for whom death was usually final). In the movie, however, he was one of three lieutenant of Al "Big Boy" Caprice, but really didn't do anything criminal onscreen (certainly not as much as Flatop and Itchy), his two most important functions involving Tracy Perp Sweating him.

In Dungeons & Dragons beholders are Eldritch Abominations big enough to bite a human in half and with enough magical power that they shouldn't ever need to. Their single main eye renders all magic in its line of sight inert, and their numerous eye-stalks are capable of firing magic energy beams that can mind control, petrify, disintegrate, or even just outright kill enemies just by looking at them. They're easily among the most dangerous creatures in existence, xenophobic to the extreme, and highly egomaniacal. In the movie, beholders are downgraded to minor watch dogs for the villains.

In most adaptations of Frankenstein, this trope happens to Frankenstein's Monster. In the original novel the monster is an agile, extremely strong, and highly intelligent Genius Bruiser who is literate and able to speak eloquently, while in most adaptations he is grunting Dumb Muscle. This is the result of Lost in Imitation, with most adaptations thinking incorrectly that they're playing true to the source material, when they're actually imitating another adaptation.

The Harry Potter films have been accused of doing this to Ron. For example, in the first book, Ron and Harry are trapped by a monstrous plant, and Hermione has to save them; she panics so much that she forgets about her powers, and Ron is the one to angrily remind her what she can do. In the film Ron almost dies because he panics, and Hermione basically figures out how to save him herself, all while acting relatively calm.

The Green Hornet goes from a dead serious Genius Bruiser whose skills are on par with Batman into an overweight manchild who requires saving from his partner Kato at every instant, fails to come up with intelligent ideas to help in their superhero crusade, and is a lot more emotionally fragile than his original counterpart. Best summed up in this one line:

I Shot Jesse James: In an interesting development, this film (possibly) does it for an actual person. The character of Soapy is portrayed as an old man that tends to drink too much and comes under the attack of various con men. However, the man he's likely based off of, Soapy Smith, was a much younger gangster that ran plenty of rackets in Creede and would often be the one conning people.

Judge Dredd: Fergee from the comics is a musclebound mutant brawler so tough that he made himself king of the Big Smelly and went toe to toe with Judge Dredd himself in one-on-one combat. The 1995 movie makes him a Butt-Monkey citizen and comic relief character played by Rob Schneider.

In The Jungle Book novel, Grey Brother the wolf was a loyal and steadfast ally of Mowgli (as well as being his foster brother) who fought alongside him in the battle with the dholes. In The Jungle Book (2016), he stays as a cute little wolf pup who doesn't do much.

Donald Gennaro in Jurassic Park. In the novel, he goes along with Muldoon to catch the Tyrannosaurus, manages to fend off a Velociraptor attack, intimidates a ship captain with Technobabble, and survives to the end. In the film, he becomes a Dirty Coward who dies a particularly embarrassing death. (Remember the guy who got eaten by the T Rex while he was on the toilet? That was Don.) Movie Gennaro is basically an Expy of Ed Regis, a cowardly, weaselly PR character who only appears in the novel. Similarly, Sarah Harding goes from an insanely badass Action Girl to a Too Dumb to LiveDamsel in Distress.

In the show earthbenders could do things like create and manipulate relatively simple objects like stone carts, they could open holes in the earth to swallow foes, block attacks with walls of stone, or bring up pillars of stone under an enemy's feet to launch them into the air by themselves. In the movie, they just chuck rocks, and they're not even very big rocks.

In the show, even beginner firebenders could easily create fire from their own body heat. In the movie only the greatest firebenders are capable of this - for most of them they can only use their bending abilities if there's an existing source of flame, like a campfire or a torch.

In addition to earth and fire getting nerfed, bending as a whole takes a lot longer to do, requiring very long series of movements to do just about anything. The director imagined bending as being a lot like dancing with the bender doing multiple moves to build up his power before finally releasing it all at once. Not only is this completely backwards from the cartoon, where any attack could be performed with simple punching and kicking movements, but it also makes elemental bending seem very inefficient - normal people might not be able to shoot fire from their hands, but they can chop a bender's head off while he's performing his intricate multi-part interpretive dance about burning people.

Female characters especially come off as less powerful than the original cartoon. Katara is also shown to be significantly less powerful and less skilled in the film than she is in the TV series. The most notable example is her fight against Zuko in the Northern Water Tribe city. In the cartoon she came close to winning the fight, only finally losing when the sun came up, thereby strengthening Zuko's powers and weakening hers. In the film she gets reamed in what is easily the most one-sided Curb-Stomp Battle in the entire movie. It also doesn't help that most of her character developing moments were either given to Aang or cut entirely.

French comic book series Les Profs (The Teachers) is about a cast of quirky, but overall competent high school teachers (except the lazy one who keeps finding new ways to avoid giving lectures). In the movie of the comic, they become the worst teachers of the whole French Educational system and are specifically selected as such (for instance the Napoleon-obsessed History teacher becomes a teacher wannabe who keeps failing at entrance exams because Napoleon is all he knows about history).

The Lone Ranger: John Reid is somewhat less of a badass compared to his radio and TV versions. Justified as most versions of him are a Texas Ranger before donning the mask, while this one is a City Mouse lawyer. However he does get better as the film goes along; by the end although still not on his predecessors levels, he is close.

Frodo in The Lord of the Rings films. In the books, he gradually becomes a more passive character due to his damaging experiences and eventually swears never to wield a sword again, which means something, because his earlier feats include hacking the hand off a barrow-wight and stabbing a cave-troll in the foot. None of this appears in the films.

The heroic Fairies from Maleficent go from highly confident, protective guardians in the Disney film to Lethally Stupid and incompetent fools. The three fairies were able to prevent Maleficent from ever locating Aurora by keeping a close eye on the girl and casting spells that made it hard for the mistress of evil to even find them. In the reboot, the fairies completely fail to watch the child and never noticed that Maleficent has found and interacted with Aurora multiple times. It's worth noting that they also have an Adaptation Name Change, leading some fans to insist that they're NOT the beloved Flora, Fauna and Merryweather from the original film. It's more justified than many examples, since the entire premise of the film is that the original version was not just inaccurate, but a deliberate falsehood used as propaganda.

Iron Man 3Zig Zags this trope. The Mandarin seems like a ridiculously Exaggerated Trope example when it's discovered that he's really a drugged-out actor playing a part. This is then subverted when you discover that the actor is a Body Double for seemingly the real Mandarin, an evil mastermind (that said, his powers aren't the same as in the comics — instead of magical rings, his powers come from genetic manipulation).All Hail the King zig-zags this even further by revealing that the man who claimed to be the real Mandarin in Iron Man 3 was himself merely an imposter; the real one is apparently a warrior king who's "inspired generations of men".

Agent 13/Sharon Carter is a somewhat loose version of this trope in that she is a skilled agent comparable to Black Widow in the comics but in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Civil War she's yet to demonstrate anything beyond regular law enforcement officer's level of skill. This is largely due to being Out of Focus compared to the comics, so we don't see anything to make her stand out compared to other SHIELD agents.

Baron Von Strucker in the comics is the founder of HYDRA, a big name villain, and a serious physical threat to anyone who tries to fight him. In Avengers: Age of Ultron he is an unimportant Smug Snake who unconvincingly insists that his mooks can beat the Avengers, surrenders to them in grovelling, humiliating style, and gets killed off-screen by Ultron.

The Destroyer. In the comics it's even more powerful than Ultron, all but impossible to damage physically and possessing cosmically destructive energy blasts (as it was created to fight the Celestials). When fighting the Destroyer it's usually all Thor can do to stay alive until the consciousness inhabiting it leaves. In the movie, it is only a threat because Thor has been Brought Down to Normal and he puts it down pretty easily once he regains his powers.

Guardians of the Galaxy: The Nova Corps are nowhere near as powerful as in the comics where each of their members had super-strength, flight and could project energy blasts, as well as many cool things thanks to the Nova Force. Not only do they lack these powers in the movie, they function as Redshirt Armygetting killed by the hundreds when Ronan attacks Xandar.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Ayesha had an entirely different backstory in the comics than she does in the movie, and also lacks similar superpowers that the Nova Corps has, being more of a Non-Action Big Bad that can't be bothered to do things herself.

Baba Yaga in Morozko (released in America as Jack Frost) is nowhere near the levels of power typically associated with the character, being easily defeated multiple times by the protagonist, Ivan. In the American release she's dissociated even further from the character, having her name changed to The Hunchbacked Fairy.

In the video game franchise, Mortal Kombat, Stryker was one of the best characters in the game. In Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, he gets killed offscreen, with the only mention of him even existing being an offhand remark by one of Shao Kahn's henchmen about how easy he was to kill.

In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Annabeth creates most of the plans that she, Percy, and Grover carry out. In the movie, she plays a smaller role, with most of the plans created by Percy. And in the second movie, her only part seems to be racist towards Tyson, and then she almost dies and Percy has to save her.

In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Redd White was the head of his own company, Bluecorp, and had blackmail material on pretty much every important person in the city. He was also able to easily get Phoenix himself arrested on trumped-up charges, to try to avoid being arrested for killing Mia, and used his power to completely ruin the reputation of the Fey clan. In the movie though, he's put in as a reporter who ruined Misty's reputation through a column in the paper. He still kills Mia and frames Maya for it, but then he's killed off in prison, to avoid the plot hole of Phoenix having him spell the name of his boss, von Karma.

Doctor Watson in many adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. In the books, he was a very sensible and sharp-minded decorated ex-military Combat Medic who demonstrates through his writing that he possesses keen attention and memory, who began his adventures with Holmes while in his mid-20s, is described as strongly built and square-jawed, is portrayed as a man of action who was handy with a revolver and notably more violence-prone and confrontational than Holmes, and who more often than not insisted that Holmes take him along on dangerous missions as backup or confronted Holmes hotly regarding the latter's unhealthy habits or antisocial behavior. On film, initially and most glaringly in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce series from the 1940s, he is generally a timid, obedient, ineffectual fool, who is usually fat, feeble, and many years older than Holmes and has a hero-worshippy, anxious, speak-when-spoken-to demeanor. Some later adaptations (like the Granada TV series) tried to undo this, but his image in the broad public consciousness didn't really get revamped until the 2009 movie inverted this trope with a vengeance.

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D drastically does this to Heather Mason. In Silent Hill 3, Heather was a fearless Action Girl who braved through the ghost town, slaughtering every enemy in her sight, in order to avenge the death of her father and come to grips with her inner demons. In the film, Heather is scared of everything, only gets four kills in the movie (One by Accidental Murder and the other three anticlimactically), defeats Alessa, her Evil Counterpart, with a hug, cries in fear throughout most of the movie, and even needs Pyramid Head to save the day by fighting her final battle with the Big Bad for her.

Alessa, one of the toughest bosses in the third game and the Greater-Scope Villain of the whole Silent Hill series, ends up killed by a hug.

Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man Trilogy. Not only is she kidnapped WAY less often in the comic books, but when she does, she always tries to free herself without any help. And she often succeeds. Not only that; unless it's a supervillain, she's perfectly capable of defending herself from any attackers. In the films, her being kidnapped became practically a cliché. For all its faults, the third and final film portrays her closer to the comics, with her finally taking initiative to avoid being killed during her kidnapping and actually being bold enough to throw a cinderblock at Venom.

While most of the characters lack some of the powers of their video game counterparts, Dhalsim is an especially notable example. In the games, he's a stretching, fire-breathing yoga master. In the movie, he's a bullied lab technician with no powers. Supposedly, he was going to get his powers in the sequel, but it was never made.

The entire movie is spent building up to Chun-Li learning how to throw a fireball, even though that's a fairly standard and easy move in the video games. It doesn't help that Kristin Kreuk is not a terribly convincing martial artist.

In the very first Street Fighter II game, Chun-Li did not have a fireball. She only gained one in the sequels, which is probably where the writers of the movie got the idea of her having to learn it.

M. Bison is not the musclebound psychic powerhouse from the games, but rather a short Irishman with no superpowers. He's also defeated in a truly humiliating manner after Chun-Li accidentally gets cement powder in his eyes like some kind of Home Alone villain. Cracked had this to say:

He's meant to be the ultimate unarmed combatant and the only people he punches in the entire movie are a chained-up secretary and an unborn fetus.

In 1993's Super Mario Bros. the entire Koopa family are changed from fire-breathing turtle dragon sorcerers into fairly average humanoids, with the only strange thing about them being that they evolved from dinosaurs rather than apes. Koopa Troopas and Goombas zigzag into Adaptational Badass by changing into big burly guys with tiny heads, but then it gets subverted when you see them in action. Mario and Luigi never once jump on someone's head or change into tanukis. There's even a brief moment at the end where the movie teases us by having the Devolution Device used on King — correction, President Koopa, turning him into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Sadly, a T. Rex still isn't quite as badass as a fire-breathing turtle dragon, and he ends up being an Anti-Climax Boss anyway, getting devolved into primordial ooze in short order.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows: Karai, the Shredder's daughter, the successor who would take over the role as the feared leader of the Foot Clan, and the same girl who murdered Leonardo once (He got better), ends up becoming a barely present backup lieutenant who suffers a One-Hit KO from April O'Neil, of all characters, in her only fight scene.

Arcee and her sisters (named outside of the movie as Chromia and Elita One). In most previous adaptations, they could hold their own with the male Autobots against the Decepticons. In the movie, they're barely able to make a dent in Sideways and two of them end up getting destroyed in the film's final battle in Egypt.

And then there's The Fallen himself. In the original comics, he was an immortal being older than the planet itself, a powerful sorcerer capable of apocalyptic dark rituals, strong enough to casually curbstomp Grimlock (even managing a Bare-Handed Blade Block against a Laser Blade), and always on firefor no particular reason. Later stories elaborated further, suggesting him to be a member of the Thirteen and therefore a former retainer to the Cybertronian overgod Primus, and the former guardian of the universal concept of entropy. Then there's the film version of the Fallen, who is some old guy robot who isn't on fire who orders around Megatron for a few scenes and then gets murdered by Prime in under two minutes. Even odder, Word of God claims that the Fallen in the films and the Fallen in the comics are the exact same individual - did he decide to not bring his godlike power into battle that day?

Transformers: Dark of the Moon does this to Wheeljack. While both versions are a cunning Gadgeteer Genius; Wheeljack in The Transformers could still do well in battle. In the movie, Wheeljack, now referred to as Que, ends up getting captured by the Decepticons in the final battle in Chicago and begs for his life before getting unceremoniously shot to pieces.

V for Vendetta turns Gordon Dietrich into a chubby, middle-aged comedian (played by Stephen Fry, no less) when he was a younger, more physically imposing career criminal in the book. Then again, the film also has him defying the Party's laws by hiding banned books and films in his house, and openly mocking Chancellor Sutler on his show (which he is eventually executed for), which is far more badass than anything the character did in the book.

Cyclops' abilities are nowhere near his comic book counterpart's. Not only are his leadership capabilities at the barest minimum, he seems to lack any form of hand-to-hand combat training. In addition, his optic blasts, unrestrained, are the strength that Comic!Cyke sets as his default. Comic!Cyke's unrestrained optic blast is the X-Men's equivalent of a smart bomb and basically wipes out anything in his field of vision.

In the movies, Wolverine's Healing Factor has been nerfed such that he is no longer immortal. In X2: X-Men United, Wolverine could literally be knocked out by a single shot (albeit one that is well-aimed and has great stopping power) while his comic-counterpart's Healing Factor has always varied Depending on the Writer, that is kinda pushing it... However, the writers apparently realized this, and in the next few films, he's able to survive multiple gunshot wounds and even partial disintegration. It gets even weirder when, in The Wolverine, he survives a nuke in a flashback scene took place beforeX2. Furthermore, Wolverine can be still killed be decapitation as his regenerative ability cannot heal entire body parts.

Jean Grey, whose telekinesis gives her the ability to... levitate a single object at a time... if she tries really hard. Oh, and throw frisbees. Needless, to say, Comic!Jean can do a lot more than that, even without the Phoenix Force.

A sad example is Rogue in X-Men: The Last Stand. In the comics, she started out as an insecure and depressed girl who didn't have control over her powers, but grew into them and become a self-confident badass. The first film had her as the insecure, depressed girl, and the second took steps to develop her power control and confidence... only for a change in directors to completely neuter this story line in the third movie and make her just as weak as she was in the first film and ending with her removing her powers altogether. Furthermore, in the comics she has super strength and flight which she gained after permanently draining the energy of the superhero Ms. Marvel, while in the movie she lacks these abilities completely. Anna Paquin has said this is one of her biggest regrets with the role, as she really wanted to fly and kick some ass at some point.

Deadpool is regarded as one of Marvel's best comic book anti-heroes because he's a crazy reality alteringAx-Crazy assassin who is nearly unstoppable. In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, he's downgraded to Colonel Stryker's attack dog, without permission to speak or even think for himself, doing whatever his boss says without question. Eventually, he gets his mouth sewn shut and his brain built with cybernetic implants that makes him Stryker's entirely remote controlled, robotic servant without free will or his own skill whatsoever. Because Stryker is in control over Deadpool, the former causes the latter to lose easily to Wolverine and Sabretooth after they decapitate him. However, his solo film redeems him after the writers realized his wasted potential.

BloodRayne does this to Belial. In the original video game, he was an exceptionally powerful demon whose body parts were scattered and were capable of granting supernatural powers to anyone who possess it (such as breathing fire, super-speed and immortality to name a few). In the Uwe Boll directed movie, he is downgraded to a vampire who managed to overcome all his species' weaknesses and his body parts merely grants other vampires this immunity instead of actual superpowers. While the original served as a Final Boss in the game and was an extremely challenging foe, movie!Belial doesn't even appear and is a Posthumous Character instead.

Applies to practically everyone in the widely hated Baldur's Gate novels (at least the two first ones) as compared to the original games.

The protagonist Abdel Adrian is initially more like the opposite, because instead of starting out as a novice just out of his childhood home like the Player Character, he's already an experienced mercenary. However, by Shadows of Amn, he becomes an Adaptational Wimp instead, because he's still the same rather crude thug he always was, whereas the game has the characters advancing to pretty epic levels and fighting demons and dragons. If you think in terms of the game, it's like he started out at level 5note pretty high in the first game, barely starting level for the second and stayed there. He gains vague super powers by the end of the book to compensate. He's also rather weak in terms of intellect and willpower.

The protagonist's companions become pretty useless. The worst might be Jaheira, who's plummeted into Faux Action Girl status faster than you can say "Abdel saw a more delicate side behind her tough warrior exterior." Imoen is another candidate by virtue of not having any kind of combat or other skills even as an Informed Ability.

The villains of Shadows of Amn: Bodhi turns from a menacing, superhumanly powerful vampire into someone who wants to seduce Adrian every time they meet and is torn apart by his Superpowered Evil Side. Meanwhile, Irenicus is still a vaguely powerful wizard, but this is nothing compared to his absolutely overwhelming power in the game. Besides, his personality goes from chilling monster to, well, like the most generic villain stereotype but with less personality. We're not even told what he looks like, probably because his game outfit was so weird.

This applies even to minor characters (and scenes and plot elements, but that's not this trope) so that it seems almost like you're reading a parody. From Shadows of Amn: Aran Linvail, head of the Shadow Thieves in Athkatla and thus a Diabolical Mastermind by definition, becomes some random assassin who needs to be killed along the way for not much reason. Saemon Havarian, a flamboyant sea captain and repeatedly backstabbing Karma Houdini, becomes a drunk with a boat.

While the Empire begins fragmenting after the Emperor's death in both continuities, thanks to attempts to consolidate power at various points by individuals such as Ysanne Isard, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and later Daala and Pellaeon the Empire remains enough of a threat that it does not formally surrender for another fifteen years. In the new EU these attempts are never made and things go to pieces much more quickly with the Empire losing planets and war materiel to the Alliance at a much greater clip in the wake of Endor, and the Galactic Civil War ultimately comes to an end barely a single year later. Of course, not helping matters for the Imperials is the fact that in this continuity Palpatine had a Thanatos Gambit in place intending to have his most fervent loyalists hasten the "failed" Empire's collapse in the event of his unexpected death.

As a consequence of the above the nascent New Republic isn't forged in a crucible of continued war and greatly downsize their fleet in order to avoid potential bad PR after twenty-five years of Imperial rule, with the bulk of it kept stationed around the capital at any one time. By the time of the sequel trilogy the government is so complacent and conflict-averse that they stick their heads in the sand and ignore the warning signs pointing to the First Order's emergence, allowing them to wipe out their leadership and most of the navy in one fell swoop come The Force Awakens. By contrast, while the New Republic of Legends do make similar mistakes in the New Jedi Order series at the outbreak of the Yuuzhan Vong War, they start off on better footing and after reorganizing into the Galactic Alliance they come out victorious by fighting both harder and smarter.

In Arrow, the toned down 'no fantastical powers' rule results in this for some characters, by turning them into Badass Normal characters instead.

Harbinger/Lyla Michaels, in the comics, is a super-powered ally of the Monitor and joined the Amazons; in the series she's a former Afghan War vet-turned ARGUS agent and leader of the Suicide Squad, and Diggle's ex wife who he reunites with.

Shrapnel, in the comics, is a walking pile of scrap metal. In the series, he's a mad bomber.

Laurel is the Black Canary in the comics, one of the best fighters in the DCU. Here, she's an OK fighter at best who can take on a thug or two, but is easily over powered by stronger fighters. To rub salt in the wounds, she's anticlimactically killed off by Damien Darhk before she was starting to become a credible Action Girl.

Sara, the show's Canary, also lacks her trademark Canary Cry. Instead, she has a sonic-generating device that has the same effect, so its more of a subversion.

Laurel's Earth 2 double in The Flash (2014) spin-off (known as Black Siren) does have the same ability, being a meta-human.

Kate Spencer is Manhunter in the comics. In-series, she is Starling City's District Attorney. Well, was...

Count Vertigo, in the comics, is a super-villain who is well trained in combat and has the ability to disrupt and disorient opponents using the "Vertigo Effect" from which he takes his name. In the series he becomes The Count, an intelligent and influential but non-powered drug lord who manufactures and sells a narcotic called vertigo which induces a disorienting effect in users.

In the Doctor Strange pilot, Clea goes from being a powerful sorceress who can hold her own alongside Strange to a normal human damsel he has to rescue from the villains.

Watson again in Elementary, who has no combat abilities, "just" intelligence. She does get a level in badass combat-wise as the series goes, but 1) it's with stick-fighting/sword skills rather than firearms and 2) by the time she gets these skills she has semi-retired from being Sherlock's sidekick and thus on many plots she is somewhere else doing investigations of her own while Sherlock is having trouble.

In this version, despite his power, the titular character seems totally unable to beat an opponent without the support of his team (the majority of the time). Justified since not only is Barry still relatively inexperienced, he has a bad habit of rushing in without thinking as well as over relying on his super speed, otherwise he'd function as a Story-Breaker Power.

Jay Garrick, the first Flash, was a memorable hero who influenced the Justice League in the comics. However, the show outright states that he was afraid of his Arch-Enemy Zoom, and spent every moment trying to run away from the villain because he feared for his life. Flashbacks show that Zoom effortlessly defeated Jay in a one-on-one fight and was about to kill him before the two were sucked into a portal into Barry's universe. Later it is revealed that this Jay was actually Zoom's time remnant, deliberately created to instill false hope into people before crushing it as Zoom. Zoom eventually kills him off, and the real Jay Garrick is revealed to be a Flash from yet another world and a double of Barry's dad. He's also implied to have been a soldier once, restoring his badass status.

Zoom himself is also an example, due to the difference in his powers. While the comic version is a Time Master who is essentially invisible, can create sonic booms by snapping his fingers, and creates rifts in time just by being present, the TV version has standard Super Speed powers, though they were augmented by Velocity 9. In addition, this Zoom lacks his comic counterpart's mastery of psychology, though he makes up for it by being much better at long-term planning. However, it's entirely possible that this will end up being a subversion, since the Zoom shown here is the Earth-2 Hunter Zolomon, as opposed to his Earth-1 counterpart.

Firestorm in the comic has to ability to manipulate matter, but here is simply a sort of Human Torch. The transmutation ability starts to manifest near the end of the Legends of Tomorrow spin-off (although it's a different Firestorm due to Ronnie's death and his replacement by Jackson as Stein's other half).

In the comics, Black Bolt is a top tier physical powerhouse, and has traded blows with the likes of Thanos, Thor and the Incredible Hulk. What's more, his voice can level mountains with a mere whisper. The TV show highlights his vocal powers and completely ignores his enhanced strength and durability, with Black Bolt even being overpowered by a group of human cops early on.

Supergirl: Mon-El of Daxam in the comics had powers on par with Superman except his Kryptonite Factor was lead, but this version is considerably weaker than the Kryptonians or Martians, having slightly lower Super Strength and Super Speed than Kara and being unable to use flight, heat vision or superbreath.

John Jones aka Martian Manhunter also seems to suffer from this in the first season, being subject to The Worf Effect and getting knocked out whenever the plot demands he be unavailable. His telepathy is also much less skillful as he can't erase specific memories without wiping a mind completely. Some of his other abilities from the comics, notably density shifting and martian vision, are absent here.

Hercules from Once Upon a Time. The Hercules from the myths was able to complete his twelve labors. This version is killed by Cerberus and sent to the Underworld. He also needs Snow White and Meg's help to defeat Cerberus, thereby finishing his labors and allowing him to move on.

Lord Moran in the Sherlock episode "The Empty Hearse". Colonel Moran in the original Sherlock Holmes stories is Moriarty's top assassin who nearly manages to kill Holmes. In the TV series he's a corrupt politician with no violent abilities.

From The Tick we get Fish Boy: lost prince of Atlantis. While we don't really see him in action in the cartoon we do know that he is at least classified as an actual superhero. In the live-action series he's downgraded to a milquetoast of a sidekick, who is constantly physically and emotionally abused by his hero, The Angler.

Tyreese, due to being introduced later than his comic counterpart and losing his Lancer position to Breakout Character Daryl as a result. In seasons 4 and 5 they reworked him into a sort of Token Good Teammate who disliked the brutal nature of the post apocalyptic world, and struggled with many moral dilemmas that weren't present in the comic such as forgiving Carol for killing Karen and refusing to kill Martin even after he'd held baby Judith hostage and forced Tyreese to walk out into a small herd of zombies. His Death In The Limelight episode was even centered around Tyreese accepting in his dying moments that he just wasn't mean enough to survive in the kill-or-be-killed setting.

In the comics, Dr.Denise Cloyd was a competent doctor in Alexandria and was able to outsmart Rick Grimes. In the show, she is a psychologist who was forced to step up as the new doctor of her safe zone, despite being incompetent at the position, and is completely timid around others. The first time she must perform surgery on a dying patient she fails after cracking under pressure.

The Saviors start out much weaker than their comicbook counterparts. For starters, they suffer from numerous defeats all throughout their debut season and are constantly mocked by Rick's people for underestimating their strengths before they actually had to take a level in badass in order to match up to their original characteristics. Though this trope was deliberately in play in an effort to give them character development as Alexandria's greatest enemy after suffering so many attacks instigated by their people.

Marvel's Netflix shows are known for their grounded nature, so almost every character in it who has some fantastical powers in the comics lose the powers or have them greatly toned down.

Nobu is the equivalent of a comics Hand ninja named Kagenobu. In the comics, Kagenobu is the founder of the Hand. The Defenders reveals that Nobu is a subordinate to Murakami, one of the Hand's founders.

Bayonetta, who slows time with every dodge, kills gods, and fights like this.

Justified with both Kirby and Yoshi, who can usually One-Hit Kill foes by Eating the Enemy. Since that would have been overpowered in a fighting game, enemies can somehow survive being eaten.

Mewtwo. Compared to the anime version, it's pretty pathetic. In the movie, his Psychic Powers are so excessive that he's practically invincible, and can mind-control people and teleport himself or large groups great distances. He's nowhere near as overpowered in his home games, but he's still one of the most powerful Pokémon, and would have no problem dealing with a similarly-leveled Jigglypuff. In Smash Bros. he has a short-range teleportation ability, and in Melee is actually considered somewhat underpowered.

Subverted with Carmilla and Death. They've both lost their signature powers (the giant floating skull that weeps acid blood for Carmilla and millions of sickles for Death) but have new powers making them equal to their counterparts (lightning for Carmilla, and Death is a powerful necromancer who can control who lives and who dies across the world).

Justified in the case of Dracula, since this story takes place before he becomes a vampire. By the end of the two DLC chapters he has gained power equal to what he's supposed to have.

Played straight with Brauner. In Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin he had the ability to create Portal Pictures and even bring his paintings to life, and he was so powerful than he almost managed to steal Dracula's Castle away from him. Like Carmilla and Death he loses his original powers, but unlike them his new powers are nowhere close to equal to what he had before.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate: Sypha Belnades in the original timeline was a powerful sorceress that went on blasting the forces of evil with her magic, aiding Trevor Belmont and eventually marrying him, whereas her magic-inclined genes were passed on to the Belmont clan, augmenting it with magic powers and also occasionally has a branch family tree that aided the Belmont clan. In this new continuity, all that remained was Sypha's marriage with Trevor, she's otherwise a normal woman that gave birth to Simon and easily got killed by Dracula's forces in the beginning of the game, becoming a Missing Mom.

The Devil, Lucifer in the flesh, is far less formidable than in The Divine Comedy. In the game, the devil pretty much loses to a mortal man who should have been easily crushed by his might and breaks down crying how God made his life horrible. In the original literary work, the devil was The Dreaded Emperor of Hell who made giants look like normal men and who would go undefeated until God gave the Last Judgement.

Beatrice, who was a noble hero who saved Dante's soul all by herself in the original source material, ends up becoming a Damsel in Distress for him to save instead of the other way around.

In the novelization of Doom 3, Councilor Swann is a typical Dirty CowardObstructive Bureaucrat corporate suit, while in the game he was an aversion of the stock character type, being actually competent and decisive.

Master Cylinder, who was a much greater threat in the 1960's TV cartoons than The Professor, is now working for him in this game, and is fought as a boss twice. He's barely as big as Felix in-game and has a ridiculously simplistic attack pattern. If you use the plane power-up against him, the fight is turned into a complete joke, since he goes down in a few hits. In the second fight, he uses bubbles instead of lasers to attack. That said, if you fight him without power-ups, he becomes the hardest boss in the game.

The Magic Bag of Tricks also goes through this. In the Joe Oriolo cartoons, it was a Story-Breaker Power that could turn into or create anything and could get Felix out of any situation. The NES game significantly nerfs its powers to where it can only do four different attacks, three of which need power ups and have a time limit, and occasionally turn into vehicles in certain contexts (i.e. canoes, a plane, a spaceship). Understandably, it would be impossible to properly transition the Bags limitless abilities into a video game, and giving the bag limits ensures that the gameplay still has challenge.

The OAV of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light does this to both Marth and Caeda. In the game, Marth was somewhat naive with a soft touch but eager to get the job done. Caeda was a devoted Action Girl who was fighting beside him right from chapter 1. Here, Marth is a mopey Emo Kid who cries at the thought of killing a deer while poor Caeda catches the Distress Ball and instead of rushing in to fight the pirates, tosses Marth the sword and sits in the backlines folding bandages - and she's portrayed as a Tsundere to boot.

The God of War Series does this hard to Typhon. In the Greek myths, he was a giant monster that sent most the Olympians running in fear at the mere sight of with only Zeus staying to fight him and nearly losing, and the battle describing as ripping mountains out of the ground and throwing them. When he appears in God of War II, he's demoted to just being one of the titans, with little power besides his size and nothing implied to special about compared to the others. Even the way he attacked, blowing air, giving hints of him having wind powers, falls flat when Chronos in God of War III is seen doing the same thing, hinting that again only came from his size.

Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee: Mothra, the heroic giant butterfly who serves as one of the toughest giant monsters and Godzilla's greatest ally is rendered one of the weakest characters in the game. Not helped by the fact that her larvae form is the one you must start out with, which only renders her vulnerable to serious attacks. This was the same creature who scared Gigan and King Ghidorah while still in her basic form.

A number of Superman games downplay Superman's powers in order to provide some risk for the player character. The problem is for those that they go too far and also remove the fun of playing as a ridiculously powerful character like Superman.

The notorious Superman 64, aside from making Supes an absolute weakling, also did this with many of Superman's Rogues Gallery. Darkseid in particular went from being the most powerful villain Superman ever fought to being punched out and taken to the police station.

In the 16-Bit game The Death and Return Of Superman (based on the eponymous comic arc and Reign Of Supermen arc), Supes can be hurt by simple mooks with baseball bats.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe reduces Superman's power level to prevent him from simply punching the Mortal Kombat fighters into orbit. The game justifies it using Superman's somewhat well-known weakness to magic. To be fair, though, his primary opponent is Raiden, who is an actual Physical God.

Injustice: Gods Among Us plays with this trope a little. While characters like Harley Quinn and The Flash can hurt characters like Superman and Wonder Woman simply by punching them, super attacks show them at vastly different power levels (with Superman literally punching his opponent into space) even if they all do about the same amount of damage. Plus, story-wise, things only shift in favor of the heroes after the non-evil Superman is brought to the Injustice universe.

Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death: Judge Mortis. The reason he's so dangerous in the comics is because his decaying touch works on pretty much anything, making him basically an Implacable Man who can melt his way through doors, walls, and people. Here he becomes trapped by an ordinary chem hazard containment room.

Shockwave in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron gets really downgraded compared to his animated counterparts. He's the Evil Genius of the Decepticons, but relies on the Insecticons to fight for him. In most incarnations, Shockwave is a Genius Bruiser who was a potential candidate to be the leader of the Decepticons if Megatron were to fall in battle. This one displays no skills of fighting or leadership whatsoever compared to Starscream and even cowers at the site of Grimlock in his T.rex form. Averted in its later prequel, Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark, where Shockwave has a level as a playable character and is not only as battle-competent as anyone else, but shows that he essentially gained control over his Insecticon minions by beating them into submission.

Harley Quinn. Of a sort, and oddly for this series. While the Joker trusts her with more than he usually does in other media, including being his main agent and controlling his gang, she's on the whole far less intelligent or capable a combatant than most other incarnations. Likewise, she lacks the (admittedly mild) super-strength and agility of her comics counterpart. Quite the opposite in Knight (mostly).

While Deathstroke does display the assassin skills he has in the comics, he loses to an inexperienced Batman in his second year under the mantle, whereas in the comics, even a highly experienced Batman will struggle greatly to survive a fight against Deathstroke. Then, he gets taken down in one punch in Arkham Knight during their rematch.

In the comics, Lady Shiva is considered to be the best and most feared martial artist in the DC Comics Universe and Batman has never beaten her in a fair fight. In Origins, she fights like the martial artist and ninja thugs and is ridiculously easy to take down. Of course she was only testing Batman's abilities and wasn't giving it her all. In the Initiation challenge map, she is a little bit tougher, being invulnerable to regular strikes and must be taken out with beatdowns or counter attacks.

In the comics, Deacon Blackfire is an incredibly clever and charismatic cult leader who temporarily conquered the city and was able to defeat and humiliate Batman the first time they fought, leaving Batman so broken that he even considered retiring. In Arkham Knight, while he has his cult, he seems to be a rambling old man with no real plan besides causing chaos and ritual sacrifices, and Batman pummels him with relative ease.

Rick Flag spends most of Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate in an office with Waller and thus, we don't get to see him in combat. He's also a captain instead of a colonel.

Heracles (better known as Hercules) is arguably the best well known Greek hero and poster boy of inhuman strength. In Age of Mythology he is a hero unit from the Heroic age with some pretty mediocre stats, making him worse than heroes like Belerophon, Perseus or Polyphemus.

Stalfos were difficult minibosses in Ocarina of Time. Here they're just cannon fodder.

On a similar note to Stalfos, Gibdos in most games are Nigh Invulnerable, only able to even be harmed at all through the use of fire. While they're still fairly tough and have the ability to resist flinching from attacks, they have lost their resistance to non-fiery attacks.

King Bulblin was a unique individual from Twilight Princess who was the leader of the Bulblins and a Recurring Boss. In this game, not only are there multiple copies of him, they're Elite Mooks at best. Ends up getting subverted as of the Twilight Princess DLC pack. It turns out the others weren't King Bulblin, they were just particularly large elite bulblins. The King Bulblin appears in a few of the new Adventure Mode missions as a major NPC. He's bigger than the common versions, with much more HP and damage potential, and almost always comes with a duo of elite henchmen.

In most Zelda games, Darknuts are some of the most dangerous Elite Mooks. Here, if anything, they are weaker than the other captains such as Moblins.

In Warhammer 40,000 the Primarchs are described as virtual gods and show it in the novels (doing things like stopping a Titan with their bare hands). But in the Talisman Horus Heresy video game, the Primarchs are really no better than the regular Space Marine heroes in the game (for example Corvus Corax has a melee ability of 3 and shooting of 2, while a Space Marine Praetor is 3 and 3 in those skills).

Nicole-458 in Dead or Alive 4. While she is an original character, created specifically for DOA4, she is supposed to be a Spartan-II from the Halo series, an enhanced Super Soldier wearing Powered Armor. In Halo, even when not in armor, a Spartan-II is capable of easily beating (to the point of sometimes unintentionally killing) even multiple Badass Normal opponents. The MJOLNIR armor makes them even more powerful. In DOA4, though, Nicole is just as strong as any of the Stripperiffic female characters, and her MJOLNIR armor doesn't do much to protect her.

War in Middle Earth despite being at the core a strategy game portrays the Nazgul as surprisingly weak. Even right at the beginning of the game just the four hobbits have a good chance of killing a lone Nazgul, should they encounter one.

The NES adaptation of The Little Mermaid severely downgrades Ursula's One-Winged Angel form, where despite possessing Triton's trident, she lacks the ability to cast lightning or summon shipwrecks, only controlling the sea currents.

Thanos appears as the first boss character in Guardians of The Galaxy: The Telltale Series, and is significantly weaker than he is in the comics. The Guardians actually manage to kill him, and the rest of the plot revolves around what happens when they take a powerful artifact known as the Eternity Forge from his corpse.

In the 2010 Black Panther cartoon, every non-Wakandan character is either evil, stupid, or both. The X-Men (aside from Storm) take it pretty bad but by far the worst victim is the Juggernaut, who is depicted as being quite a good deal dumber than usual, at one point being described by the other characters as basically brainless. In the original comic story his role belonged to the Rhino, who generally is considered to be that dumb.

In most continuities involving Batman, including the comic books and Batman: The Animated Series, Rupert Thorne is a powerful and ruthless mobster who controls the Gotham underworld with an iron fist. However, in The Batman he was a Dirty Coward who Batman took all of five minutes to apprehend in the series pilot; he only appeared afterwards in a couple of cameos. However, The Batman's tie-in comics did try to establish him as a consistent player in Gotham's underworld, even taking advantage of local supervillains to further his own ends.

Granted, around 1990 the Castlevania games hadn't given Simon Belmont much in the way of character development, pretty much a Badass Normal who defeated Dracula twice using only a (at that point, not all that special) whip. In the TV series he was reduced to The Drag-Along. It's hard to believe the bumbling, narcissistic Simon of the TV series could possibly have gone up against someone as threatening as Dracula and even survived, much less triumphed.

Dracula, too. The existence-threatening Big Bad of the series got turned into a dork in a banana-yellow tux who could be stopped just by winding him up like a top and spinning him back into his coffin.

This also applies on some level with Mega Man and KidIcarus. Mega Man does have plenty of strength, but it's still quite a step down from having an arm that turns into a gun and the powers of the Robot Masters he defeats. Kid Icarus' has the marksmanship of his trademark arrows reduced to comical proportions, and on occasions where they do hit something, they do things like giving wolves balloons instead of winning fights.

The villains got hit with absolutely astonishing Villain Decay as well as this trope. In Punch-Out!!, King Hippo was one of the harder boxers in the game but was easy to beat once one learned the strategy; his usefulness in the cartoon was hampered by strict censorship involving throwing punches. Eggplant Wizard goes from being a boss that can turn the player into a vegetable to merely making jokes about the subject and displaying no sorcery prowess whatsoever. The biggest victim had to be Mother Brain, going from the all-powerful Big Bad of her game to an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain that never truly got the better of Kevin and the other denizens of the Palace of Power.

In the Darkstalkers cartoon Pyron is turned into a completely incompetent villain, especially compared with his video game counterpart. In the ninth episode of the series, he even has to be saved from Huitzil. However, this can also be argued for all the main cast as they were In-Name-Only characters.

Lolth herself - as in, the dreaded spider-goddess of the drow - appeared in the cartoon version of Dungeons & Dragons, where she seemed to be an ally of Venger; she first appeared as a beautiful elven maiden, who lured the heroes into a dark cavern, at which point she quickly assumed her true, demonic form and dumped them into a subterranean web. Venger appeared briefly to gloat, and then left her to deal with them, but she proved far weaker than she was in any other setting, defeated rather easily after the heroes managed to sever a web and causing her to plummet helplessly into the abyss below.

Similarly, Green Lantern's ring was used in a much more limited fashion in the early seasons. Eventually, this too changes with the writers lampshading the matter by having his fellow Lantern Katma Tui lecture him on his unimaginative use of the ring.

Wonder Woman very belatedly got the full powers of her lasso unlocked, finally bringing her up to par with her standard comics incarnation.

Several villains also got this treatment. The Key went from a man with a god complex and mind control abilities to a thief and escape artist, the Cadre and Extremists (whom can knock the League on their asses, including Power Girl and Captain Atom) were portrayed in a similar vein to many villains in the Ultimate Spider-Man example (rather easy for a very small group of Leaguers to defeat), and Supergirl scoffed at fighting Dr. Cyber (one of Wonder Woman's foes) and Queen Bee (who nearly killed Big Barda). Tala went from an evil goddess in the comics to simply being an Evil Sorcerer and the Big Bad's girlfriend. This overlaps with Popularity Power, as most of these villains are pretty obscure and have gone through a fair amount of Villain Decay in the comics.

Doomsday doesn't kill Superman in either of his appearances. The Justice Lords defeat him in his debut in "A Better World" with Lord!Superman lobotomizing him and he still loses to the normal Superman in "The Doomsday Sanction".

In Challenge of the Superfriendsthe Scarecrow was one of the more useless members of the Legion of Doom, with his only shown ability being to summon crows which rarely did more than annoy the Superfriends. In the comics, however, he is usually written as a considerably more dangerous villain, being adept at physical combat (especially when armed with his scythe) in addition to his "fear gas", a hallucinogenic nerve gas that is enough to render most people a sobbing wreck with just one whiff. The last iteration of the show, The Super Powers Team, gave him back his fear gas, but played this trope on it too: instead of forcing people to hallucinate their darkest fears it instead made them temporarily afraid of whatever specific thing that particular batch of gas was made for, which he then still had to find a source of - so a "fear of spiders" gas bomb, for example, would still be useless unless Scarecrow had a few spiders handy. The end result? Scarecrow still wasn't up to par with his comics self.

More generally, the "no punching" rules imposed by the Moral Guardians of the time ended up making many of the heroes and villains look unusually ineffective. Hawkman and Solomon Grundy were probably the hardest hit (pun fully intended) given that they were all about melee combat in the comics.

Seanbaby: The cartoon's No Punching Rule was harder on Grundy than it was for the other villains. Most of them still had things they could throw or gadgets they could push buttons on. If you take away Solomon Grundy's ability to punch, he's as useless as a first base coach. The only thing he could do during a fight is something we called the "Grab Attack" as kids. It was a complicated move where he grabbed the other guy until they pulled free or shoved him off. Sometimes they waited until he carried them around a little bit. You might have inadvertently used this same move on your kitten or a bag of groceries.

The Ruby Spears Mega Man cartoon does this to the Robot Masters, reducing them to, for the most part, glorified Mooks with names, with only Proto Man, turned into Mega Man's Evil Counterpart in the series, being depicted as a threat.

Lava Lord, from Mighty Max. In the original toyline Lava Lord is a dangerous villain who is more than capable of fighting on his own thanks to his Fireforce Sword, which can control fire and heat. In the cartoon he relies 100% on his Humongous Mecha, Magus, and seems to be pretty much useless without it.

Sonic, mainly for plot convenience (Robotnik's rule over Mobius means he can't be fully defeated), has his powers be less effective than in the games, relying more on stealth and evasion to keep out of harm's way until a true emergency arrives. In addition, he's portrayed as more reckless and air headed than in the games and other adaptations, often reliant on the other Freedom Fighters (usually Sally) to direct him in missions and keep him from killing himself and others with his poor strategies. In almost half the series, he was a Badass in Distress that SallyAcorn or another had to bail out.

Even Robotnik. Despite his Adaptational Villainy in the show, he would never get his hands dirty and personally fight Sonic and the Freedom Fighters, always sending Snively and mooks after them. Whenever Sonic would break into his place in Robotropolis and personally face him, Robotnik would be portrayed as being quite helpless. And that's not even getting to his portrayal in the second season, which made him such a buffoon that he would get laughed at by all but the most clownish incarnations of the character if they met him. In addition, his ability to build killer robots and similar stuff was downplayed in this adaptation, as he would always leave that in Snively's hands.

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends did this to Wolverine. In the Canucklehead's sole appearance on the cartoon, not only is he easily defeated by the Juggernaut, but his adamantium-coated claws, which can slice through anything, get him easily stuck in tiny brick wall, leaving him stuck for the rest of the fight.

The Beyonder may not seem like this because of how powerful he still is, but that's because the comic version is so powerful that even if incredibly nerfed he is still more powerful than any other character. The comic version is revealed to be an entire alternate universe in human form. His powers can basically be summed up as "he decides reality will be a certain way, and so it is." The show Beyonder is, again, the most powerful character in the series, but his power can be exhausted with overuse, and when depleted, he was apparently in real physical danger from Man-Spider. Apparently he is comic-level powerful when in his own dimension, but again, comic Beyonder is his own dimension and is all-powerful wherever he is. While far from a Superfriends Aquaman level of suck, we at least go from standing alone at capital-G-God tier to coming down to... well, less.

The Hobgoblin is still a genuine threat, but lacks the Super Serum he uses in the comics and is thus simply a Badass Normal. He manages to be a major thorn in Spidey's side, but ends up thoroughly outclassed when the Green Goblin finally makes his debut, Psycho Serum and all.

Although it's not helped by the different direction taken by the storyline, Waspinator and Terrorsaur both got hit with this hard in Beast Wars. Waspinator in the toyline was The Dreaded and a Cold Sniper, whilst Terrorsaur was a rampaging berserker warrior. Both also got transmetal forms that were even more lethal. In the series? Waspinator is the Butt-Monkey and Terrorsaur is The Starscream. Fortunately this didn't hurt Waspinator at all, and he's a fan-favourite.

Magneto in innumerable adaptations, most visibly X-Men and X-Men: Evolution, is never as powerful as his comic counterpart, usually restricted to hurling around girders. (Ironic, since he rarely gets into any direct confrontation with the X-Men outside the comics.) The most epic case, however, is surely his guest-starring episode ("The Menace of Magneto") in the 1978 Fantastic Four animated series.

Jean Grey, who wields the power of the Phoenix for a few episodes but is otherwise far weaker than she is in the comics.

Silver Samurai lacks his tachyon field abilities in X-Men, instead relying on trickery and a teleportation device. When Wolverine destroys Samurai's teleportation harness, he's left completely helpless, and pathetically slinks off while Wolverine tells everyone he'll never be a threat again.

Mystique, in the first season of X-Men: Evolution, is simply pathetic, belittled by Magneto frequently and chronically knocked out by her enemies (barely even lasting a minute in any fight). The only way she succeeded in doing anything was by being a Manipulative Bastard. In one episode in season 3 she existed only so that Rogue could absorb her shapeshifting abilities to sneak into the Acolytes' hideout.

Wolverine and the X-Men does this to several characters who, in their portrayal in comics and most adaptations, would not allow Wolverine to steal the spotlight as completely as he does in this series.

Storm becomes more timid and prone to getting a Tap on the Head to keep her from easily winning fights.

Cyclops loses all of his leadership quality from the comics and most adaptations in favor of Wangst.

In one episode, the entire team except for Wolverine is taken down in seconds by Silver Samurai and some ninjas. They do get a few moments of being the X-Men you know and love, but they're sadly few and far between.

Most of the cast of Young Justice, which according to Word of God was an intentional effort to make the massive superhuman cast manageable. For instance, Superboy lost his Telekinesis, flight, ice breath, and Eye Beams, while Miss Martian lost her super-strength. And even without it, Miss Martian still managed to be one of the most scarily-powerful characters in the entire series.

Anti-Monitor in Green Lantern: The Animated Series. Oh make no mistake, he still drained a universe and destroyed superweapons left and right. However, his comic book self could tank having War World dropped on him, fighting The Spectre, and take an entire Crisis Crossover to defeat on multiple occasions. Here? It's not even the combined red and green lantern armada that beats him. It's Aya... the weakest member of the team... by herself.

Done intentionally and Played for Laughs in one Classical Mythology-inspired episode of Animaniacs. Heracles, despite his great strength, is portrayed as a crybaby who throws a childish tantrum because he doesn't want to do the Twelve Labors that his "mean old dad Zeus", as he puts it, told him to do. (Of course, that alone means the writers took serious liberties.)

Two Looney Tunes cartoons ("Drip Along Daffy" and "My Little Duckaroo") featured a villain called Nasty Kanasta, who was as Nasty as his name implied. (The second cartoon was even a case of The Bad Guy Wins. Poor Daffy.) However, in the later cartoon "Barbary Coast Bunny" featured a different version of Nasty Canasta, who was an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, more of a Con Man than the earlier gun-slinging bad guy, easily outwitted and outsmarted by Bugs. (And not even voiced by Mel Blanc, but by Daws Bulter.) Fortunately, Canasta was back to his old, nastier self when he appeared in Duck Dodgers, in an episode aptly titled "The Wrath of Canasta".

Done with a few of the engines in Thomas the Tank Engine. Toby in particular was a Cool Old Guy in The Railway Series novels and, though his weaker build was pointed out at times, he still proved one of the most efficient and intelligent engines on the railway. In later episodes of the TV series, Toby is a Lovable Coward and almost as buffoonish as the younger engines he mentored (to the point Swapped Roles where Thomas and Percy have to set him straight are common). While he is still shown at times to be good at his job, he needs heavy direction first.

The Purple Dragons are usually a large, city-wide gang that menaces New York in most adaptations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), they're just three guys that cause trouble in their neighborhood and commit minor crimes.

All the main characters in Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. suffer from this trope significantly. In the first episode, Hulk is worried that A-Bomb is at risk of being killed by a lava flow (he's fine, but Hulk still acts like lava is something capable of threatening a Hulk), and in many episodes they get beaten down or captured by enemies who in the comic books are nowhere near the power level needed to do more than annoy Hulk.

In the game Pac-Man Blinky was portrayed as the leader and the aggressive one, being the main chaser in the group. When the game got an animated show, the leader role was given to Clyde. As a result, Blinky became the coward and worry-wart of the group. Compared to the other ghosts, Blinky usually had a nervous look on his face and sometimes was scared of Pac-Man when he didn't even have a power pellet.

During the past segments of Xiaolin Showdown, we are told that Dashi engage in a titanic showdown with the Heylin witch Wuya, whom Dashi considers her as the greatest foe that he has ever fought. But when we see true version of the battle in the final episode, it simply consists of Dashi, Guan, and Chase Young treating her as just another foe for them to battle by simply stomping through her entire golems without any mention of the epic battle and Dashi simply seals her in the puzzle box without breaking a sweat.

All of the Titans from Teen Titans Go! got hit with this. The Titans of this cartoon all squabble amongst each other, throw immature tangents whenever they don't get their way, get captured in most of their shorts, somehow manage to accidentally kill themselves once, break under pressure easily, and can get held back by being tied up with ordinary rope (even the superpowered ones). They also take on a few darker traits as well. Naturally, as a Widget Series, all of this is regularly lampshaded, with a crossover episode even referring to the world of this series as "A universe where heroes don't care about defeating villains."

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